With no new Mega Man level design contests cropping up, I found myself able to once again devote my free time to...uh...staying late at the office. April was a busy month. However, I managed to accomplish a few things of note, so I'm happy with what I have to show for myself this time.

I did a lot of writing in April (at least, by current standards), and there's another Star Trek Series Opinions page and two blog posts already in the works for May. If you ever miss the kind of writing I used to do for Exfanding Your Horizons, the posts from this month should be a treat. Incidentally, I wrote almost the entire post about the NuTrek Enterprise back in February; I just didn't take photos until the trailer for Star Trek Beyond and news of the upcoming Star Trek TV series got me thinking about NuTrek again, which also prompted the 2009 Series Opinions page. I swear I've finally gotten all the complaining about the reboot out of my system. Well, at least until I start reviewing Into Darkness.

I simply did not have the time or wherewithal to record as much as I wanted, but I managed to pull off one impromptu livestream, and I recorded the intro stage of Mega Man 8 for my upcoming video playthrough. And, of course, I published the elaborate April Fools video I had originally planned for last year. Happily, it works even better now than it would have then.

I effectively cleared six games from my backlog and only bought two new ones with my tax refund money, but I still only broke even on my progress index for April. Go figure. April was simultaneously one of the most refreshing and one of the most disappointing gaming months I've had in quite a long time.

Appallingly unprofessional PC port issues aside, I had an absolute blast with Ghostbusters, which reminded me why I play video games in the first place. The game was immersive, faithful to the spirit of the movies, thoughtfully designed, possessed of fun mechanics and excellent production values, and very funny (the Spirit Guide descriptions cracked me up). X-Men Legends was a cathartic release of wanton destruction and a throwback to my college days, when people in the house would pop in and out as one of us kept plugging away at the story mode.

Playing a shinier version of Gradius, which I grew up with on the NES, brought back some fond memories, and Gradius Gaiden was awesome. Hopping around from game to game in the Gradius Collection gave me my first real appreciation of what good and bad game design look like in a scrolling shooter. Bad game design looks like this iteration of Gradius III, and to a lesser extent Gradius IV, which derive challenge from all the wrong places.

Although I wasn't as happy with those games as I'd hoped, FEZ was the biggest letdown of the bunch. It could have been a clever puzzle-platformer, or a diabolical puzzle game with platforming elements, but it insisted on being a boring and tedious collectathon with almost everything worthwhile locked away as a poorly explained secret. The game is full of good ideas, but their execution makes the game feel either pretentious or just badly designed—neither of which inspired me to stick with the game any longer than I had to.

Oh, and while the sentiment of gifting me with AVGN Adventures was appreciated, ten minutes with the game reinforced how much I really dislike AVGN. Sorry.

It's no secret that J.J. Abrams' rebooted Star Trek universe has been a source of consternation and displeasure for me since 2009, but while I've discussed the problems with the feel and storytelling of NuTrek rather extensively, there's one element of the reboot that I have yet to thoroughly critique: the Enterprise herself.

And yes, I'm enough of a fan to know that starship names should be italicized. You'll thank me someday when I talk about "the Enterprise of Enterprise" and you can readily identify which one's the TV show. But I digress.

I bring this up because, once a month, I receive two meticulously detailed and screen-accurate model starships from the Star Trek Official Starships Collection, each one accompanied by a magazine filled with neat photos of the featured ship, its fictional history within the Star Trek universe, behind-the-scenes stories about its real-world development, and distracting grammatical errors. (P.S.: Eaglemoss, if you ever need an editor with content area expertise...) The ships come from all corners of Star Trek's 50-year history: icons such as the USS Enterprise-D, the NX-01 (I'll refrain from saying "the Enterprise of Enterprise" so soon), and Deep Space Nine (which is a space station and not a starship, but I'm not complaining); that one cool ship you saw in the background in First Contact; that weird ship that only appeared in one episode of Voyager...really, anything and everything. Short of buying me an actual, functional starship, this is as good as it gets for a geek like me.

Aside from one disappointment (the refit Enterprise from The Motion Picture [TMP], which is perfectly acceptable until you see how much more surface detail went into all the other ships), every new ship has been a joy to unbox and put on display. Once every few months, a special issue becomes available, featuring a larger-than-usual ship for an extra charge. Some months ago, I was given the option to become the proud (?) owner of the Abramsverse Enterprise from the 2009 reboot.

This one. Source: Memory Alpha.

This was a challenging decision. On the one hand, I have so many problems with the design of the ship in question; I cannot readily call to mind any other ship from the entire franchise that I outright dislike. On the other hand, I was looking forward to a future special issue featuring the USS Vengeance from Into Darkness, and it wouldn't do to have the one NuTrek ship I like on a shelf without its rival beside it. Furthermore, there's always the possibility that a future film or TV series set in the Abramsverse will change my opinion about the reboot, and I'd regret missing the opportunity now to collect something I could like later. The completionist in me ultimately won out, and I've been trying to figure out how to feel about it ever since.

On its own, the design of the 2009 Enterprise (sounds like I'm talking about a car) is passable enough. If it were a ship designed by a new alien race or belonging to a different sci-fi franchise altogether, I don't think I'd mind it. It's sleek, it's curvy, it's glowy and full of lens flare. The problem is that it's a reimagining of a classic ship that, like the rest of NuTrek, ignores every precedent that should have informed its design.

The USS Enterprise of the original Star Trek (TOS) is simultaneously very '60s and very forward-thinking. The ship cuts a memorable figure, distinct from the flying saucers and rocket ships that had dominated science fiction up until that point, but the surface details are only slightly more complex than anything you'd see in Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon. It's retro and futuristic at the same time, which makes it difficult to revise for a modern audience without sacrificing some part of its identity. It's also a beloved icon, so someone is bound to complain, no matter what you do. I get that.

Do you know how hard it is to find a good on-screen picture of the original, non-remastered Enterprise anymore? Source: Memory Alpha.

I think the refit Enterprise created for TMP is a superb example of a revision done right, though. The ship's proportions and basic shape were left intact, more surface detail was added, and only a few elements (nacelles, deflector dish) were revamped substantially, modernizing the ship by tinkering with the existing blueprints. When you look at the subsequent Enterprises (B, C, D, E, and even J), it's apparent that the same design mentality was still in use; you can imagine each Enterprise being stretched or compressed into the shape of the next one in line, rather than being built from scratch.

This technically isn't the refit Enterprise from TMP, but it might as well be. Source: Memory Alpha.

Even the NX-01, designed for a TV show filmed decades after TOS but taking place a century before, has several key design elements in common with good ol' NCC-1701 (especially after the refit that was planned to happen if the show had remained on the air). If you can accept that somewhere between Enterprise and Next Generation there is a galaxy-wide revival of 1960s aesthetics that interrupts the otherwise consistent look of Star Trek, then it's not unreasonable to believe that Archer's Enterprise could evolve into Kirk's Enterprise.

Here's the thing: The Abramsverse doesn't reboot all of Star Trek; it only rewrites the timeline starting with the birth of James T. Kirk. This means that Zefram Cochrane still made his first warp flight in the Phoenix we saw in First Contact, and that the NX-01—whose design clearly took some measure of inspiration from the Phoenix—was still out saving the galaxy while Kirk's grandfather was in diapers. We even see models of these ships in Admiral Marcus's office in Into Darkness. So even if every other starship design principle of later Star Trek is thrown out the airlock, the Abramsprise should still look like a descendant of the Phoenix and the NX-01.

It doesn't even look like a distant relative. My wife says it looks like a Fisher-Price toy.

What even am I looking at? A giant squid? A good starship should look good from any angle.

And you can't peg this on Nero disrupting the timeline, either. Starfleet encounters all-powerful beings that destroy starships all the time, yet this one incident where a mystery ship obliterates a single vessel and then disappears for 25 years is enough to spook Starfleet engineers into building a USS Enterprise that's a caricature of the original timeline's ship, and twice as big. Bigger, in fact, than the largest vessels that Picard and Sisko bring into battle against the Borg and the Dominion a century later. I think the following chart speaks volumes about what's wrong with the NuTrek Enterprise:

Source: Byrne Robotics.

How would any Star Trek character explain this monstrosity to a fellow Starfleet officer without breaking the fourth wall? In real life, the designers took the original, forward-thinking Enterprise and exaggerated the components for a faux-retro look that's more 1960s than the 1960s. They were going to keep the ship close to the original scale, but then the scene in the shuttle bay didn't look impressive enough, so they doubled the size of the ship to increase the wow factor. No Starfleet engineer says, "This shuttle bay isn't jaw-dropping enough; let's double the effort and resources required for the whole construction."

Part of the reason I like the Vengeance so much is that it at least looks like a plausible product of Starfleet covert ops engineering. It's essentially a mashup of two canonical starship classes (Constitution refit and Sovereign), with creative elements that give the ship a unique look without altering the weight and lines of traditional Starfleet design. Even the Kelvin, lopsided as it is, has a sense of balance in line with that of the Oberth or Constellation classes.

The USS Vengeance. Yes, I know this is a Christmas ornament, but you can barely tell the shape of the ship from what's shown in the movie. Source: Memory Alpha.

When I look at the Abramsprise, all I can see are the ridiculous nacelles. In contrast with every other vessel in Starfleet history, the nacelles are as thick as the saucer section and even thicker than the stardrive section. They're too long and close together relative to the saucer section, giving the ship the appearance of having been gripped tightly and pulled back like a balloon animal. The pylons that attach the nacelles to the rest of the ship have almost a Romulan-style curve to them; Starfleet pylons are consistently straight, and even Galaxy- and Nebula-class pylons only use curves to round off the sharpness of a right angle. Everything about the nacelles draws the attention to the back of the ship. It's also irritating that the bussard collectors glow blue instead of the usual red. That last point might seem nitpicky even for me, but try changing one of the colors on your country's national flag and see how long it takes to bother you.

Any other elongated class of starship with a sense of movement to its design (e.g., Excelsior, Sovereign) has the look of a graceful bird or a swift predator about it. The Abramsprise has the look of an animal that was injected with whatever absurd vaccine McCoy gave to Kirk that made his hands swell up in the film. The nacelles are oversized jet thrusters hanging onto the back of the ship for dear life, and the saucer section fits onto the secondary hull like a full-sized sombrero on a child. There's no way this ship was designed by the same Starfleet engineers who would've made the Enterprise we know and love if some angry Romulan hadn't killed Kirk's dad.

Here's a comparison shot that helps illustrate how absurdly exaggerated the Abramsprise's features are—note that the engineering hull is basically the same size on both vessels (and also the bridge module, but you can barely tell here):

It's like the two silliest moments of The Animated Series at once: the real Enterprise riding piggyback on an inflatable starship decoy.

I think about the thought processes that went into designing the Reliant (immediately recognizable as Starfleet, but with a different shape so as not to confuse it with the Enterprise), the Excelsior (the Enterprise, but with an elegant Japanese aesthetic), and the Defiant (built for war, not exploration), and they all ask, "WWSD?" (What Would Starfleet Design?). The proportions, the contours, they all make sense to me. Nothing makes sense to me about the Abramsprise, and I can barely get a good look at the whole thing because my eyes keep sliding down the ship and falling off the back of it. This is not redesigning a ship for a new generation; this is having a little too much fun with Kai's Power Goo.

NuTrek had an opportunity to craft an Enterprise that made more sense as a successor to the NX-01. And as far as the story is concerned, there's not nearly enough of a rationale for why the new Enterprise looks so drastically different from the one that would have been designed if Nero hadn't shown up for two minutes. Early design sketches of the reboot Enterprise hint at a faithfulness to the source material, but the finished product seems to reflect the personal taste of the director more than the 50 years of Star Trek history that should have played into the design. I could even live with the retro-futuristic design if it leaned more toward TOS in terms of surface detail; ironically, those complex textures make the ship look too close to the Starfleet aesthetic from TMP onward, which only serves to emphasize the differences with the rest of the ship.

This could have been the Abramsprise, and I could have lived with it. The differences are subtle, but vital. We were so close. Source: Memory Alpha.

On the other end of the spectrum is something like this redesign by Gabriel Koerner, featured in a Star Trek: Ships of the Line calendar predating the 2009 reboot, which captures a lot of that NX-01 feel without sacrificing the shape of the ship. Source: Memory Beta.

Somewhere between the two designs above is the Enterprise that should have carried us into the future.

Every good hero has an origin story. Often, the stories are rooted in tragedy; family members of heroes-to-be have an alarmingly high mortality rate. Accidents, coincidences, even destiny itself have been known to set a hero on the path to adventure. No matter the details, origin stories all have one thing in common: they bore me to tears.

When Frodo Baggins finally leaves the Shire, or when Harry Potter finally arrives at Hogwarts, then things get interesting to me. I outright refused to see the reboots of Fantastic Four and Spider-Man; I don't need to spend at least half a movie waiting for these mundane characters to turn into superheroes again, having just watched it happen a mere decade ago. Heroes are like meals at a restaurant: I don't mind learning about how they're made, but I don't need to see the whole process every single time. More often than not, origin stories aren't even appetizers; they're the waiter standing there with a tray of food, talking about where it came from instead of serving it to you.

If I want an origin story, I want an origin story. Batman: Year One is one of my favorite graphic novels, despite being nothing but an origin story, because it spends all 96 pages telling a compelling, self-contained tale that just happens to take place earlier in Bruce Wayne's life than we're used to seeing. The path to becoming a hero is the story, not just the first third or half of the story that takes away from the time I could be spending watching Batman be Batman.

That's why I like the first Iron Man movie as much as I do: Tony Stark is Iron Man, and there's no waiting involved to see the character you signed up for. The only difference is that he gets cooler tech as the story progresses. As the movies go on, Tony's origin story continues to play an instrumental role in his development. This is not some one-and-done explanation of how he became a superhero; the shrapnel in his chest and his fixation on building a legacy before he dies are persistent reminders of his origin story. The origin and the story are too intertwined for the former to feel like a roadblock to the latter.

That's why I also like Captain America: The First Avenger, despite it being yet another origin story (set during a time period that's been overdone in film, no less). At first, Steve Rogers is hardly the shield-slinging super soldier he goes on to become, but he's still a hero in his own right. Cap's roots as a scrawny, straight-laced, diehard patriot are essential to appreciating who this character is and what he stands for, and we don't need to wait for him to power up before he starts growing a personality or dealing with conflicts of any real consequence.

Compare this with Star Wars. (Yes, I'm about to criticize Star Wars.) Luke Skywalker lives on a boring moisture farm on a boring rock called Tatooine doing boring jobs for his boring uncle. It's abundantly clear that Luke (and the audience, if the audience is me) desperately wants something—anything—interesting to happen. When adventure finally finds him, there's a transition period where Luke is still a naive, excitable farm boy seeing the galaxy for the first time...and then he's suddenly a confident action hero, with little or no trace of his previous character traits. By the start of the next movie, nothing that happened before meeting Ben Kenobi really matters anymore. It's origin stories like this that drive me mad. Yes, it's important to Luke's character arc to show his progression from an average teenager to the savior of the galaxy, but we don't need to spend so much time with his old friends, adopted parents, and drudgerous life on a moisture farm to understand what he's leaving behind, particularly if the story never refers back to them after a certain point.

A narrative doesn't always need to develop a full backstory for the heroes, nor does it need to present all the backstory in chronological order. Super Mario Bros. for the NES drops you right into the action; there's no time wasted on playing as Mario in the real world for the first few levels so you can appreciate his humble origins as a plumber. Firefly is selective about how its characters' origin stories are conveyed, leaving much of the past shrouded in mystery until it's narratively rewarding to reveal more. In the case of origin stories, I believe that less is generally more; you can always shed more light on a character's past as a story progresses, but you can never give back time spent setting up the story people came to see.

I think the solution may be to drop the "origin story" designation altogether. Just tell one good story, instead of two separate stories that need to be told together. If we learn something about the hero's background in the process, so much the better.

March was another busy month. No sooner had I submitted my entry for the Make a Good Mega Man Level contest on Sprites INC than another contest opened up: designing any number of six-screen level segments for the upcoming Mega Man Endless fangame. Between friends, family, work, and my deadline-driven side projects, I was going almost nonstop by the end of the month. It was exhausting, but it was also a reminder of how I thrive on having a variety of activities to keep me occupied. Let's see what all I have to show for myself.

I might not write many posts anymore, but the ones I do write are ones I want to hang on to. The story of my concert experience with Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage is one of my favorite things I've written for this blog, and I think it's the biggest indication that I've finally moved away from the "general bitterness commentary" that weighed down my writing only a year or two ago. Also, I've decided to start linking to my individual Series Opinions articles once they're finished, regardless of whether everything else on the page with them is finished. I've still got a lot of Star Trek and Mega Man to write about (and rewrite about, because opinions are subject to change), but I'm one step closer to having my definitive take on every part of my favorite entertainment franchises all in one place.

Due to all the time I spent makingMega Man levels in February and March, I wasn't able to focus on playing Mega Man levels, (meaning my playthrough of Mega Man 8 got delayed)...but I did subject one of my friends to a level I made, so we can call that a compromise. I did keep another one of my recording projects going, though, carrying on with the next installment in what is possibly my favorite first-person shooter series. I like MotS less than its predecessor, but I think I like this playthrough more than the one I did for the original Jedi Knight. So it balances out. Pardon the choppiness of the first video; it gets better.

Wow. This portion almost isn't worth mentioning. My wife and I played one round of LEGO LotR and were put off enough by all the glitches and gameplay issues that we haven't found the motivation to go back yet, and I played just enough of Nintendo Land with friends that it qualifies as Beaten by my standards. Oh, and I chipped away at X-Men Legends and played a little more of the 3DS Mega Man Legacy Collection, so it's not like I completely abandoned my favorite pastime.

Started:
- LEGO The Lord of the Rings (Wii)

Beat:
- Nintendo Land (WiiU)

...And that's just the stuff I finished in March! April oughta be pretty big, and I'm in a great mindset going into the month.

Star Trek has been a part of my family for as long as I can remember. Growing up, our Saturday night tradition was homemade pizza and whatever iteration of Star Trek was on the air at the time. Since I met my wife in college, we've been working through every episode of every series together. My sister and brother-in-law are now doing the same. Star Trek is a constant in our lives, an unending source of meaningful conversations and satisfying entertainment for the entire family—a family of musicians, I might add.

Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage brought together three of my favorite things in life: family, music, and Star Trek. It's up there with Star Trek: The Exhibition as one of my favorite family excursions in recent memory, and I still get a big dumb grin anytime I start thinking about it. Fifty years of Star Trek history expressed through live music, with thematically arranged video clips and narration by Michael Dorn to tie it all together. A lifetime's worth of fond memories with the people sitting next to me. And we all had homemade pizza together before we left for the concert. Jeez, I'm tearing up already.

A lesser concert would have consisted of a live orchestra on a boring stage playing all the main themes you expect to hear from a concert like this. But this was a 50th anniversary concert, and you could tell it was organized by people who were as big a fan as anyone in the audience. It was a celebration done right. The front of the stage was dressed up to look like the exterior of the Enterprise-A (or the refit Enterprise from the earlier movies; your preference), as though the audience were out in space and peering into the bridge from afar. The back of the stage was lit with stars, and behind the musicians was a mockup of Worf's tactical console from the Enterprise-D. The icing on the cellular peptide cake was the ambient noise while we waited for the concert to start—the familiar low rumble and all the pings and beeps you'd expect to hear on the bridge of a starship. Talk about atmosphere.

I came prepared, of course, wearing my Original Series crew tie with my concert-appropriate attire. At least two others in the audience had me beat, though: one man was dressed to report for duty in engineering on the original Enterprise, and one woman looked like she'd just come back to Starfleet Command from the Khitomer conference. Even among the people in plain clothes (no doubt time-travelers from the 24th century trying to blend in), there was was an air of comfort and kinship, almost like you get from being at a convention. Even after the concert started, no one tried to hush any of the respectfully quiet (and relevant) side conversations among my family, because Star Trek is something you're supposed to talk about. People laughed and cheered in all the right places throughout the performance (and you could tell where the Voyager [VOY] fans and the Spock-ophiles were sitting by the unusually large reactions they gave to certain video clips and pieces of narration). Everyone in that auditorium was family, in a way. What a great feeling.

The first piece the orchestra played was a smart place to start: the closing theme to The Motion Picture, which mostly doubles as the opening theme for The Next Generation (TNG). Everyone has their favorites, but the majority of fans can agree on liking The Original Series (TOS) or TNG, so this was a good attempt to please everyone. The next piece was equally equitable: the sweeping overture from Generations, the movie that brings together TOS and TNG. At least, that's what my brain registered it as—you'll have to forgive any lapses in memory or music recognition, given that we didn't have a concert program to take home for reference. I kind of preferred it that way, though; there was a certain joy in playing "name that tune" and making predictions about what the orchestra would play, and I loved some of the surprises along the way.

As the overture from Generations was played, the screen behind the orchestra came to life with scenes from the beginning of Star Trek V, where Kirk is slowly climbing the mountain. It took me a few moments to wrap my head around this seemingly out-of-nowhere clip selection, but it fit well with the music—a sort of metaphor for Star Trek's long climb to this milestone anniversary. The gorgeous vistas and sumptuous swells of the music drove home the scope of this adventure that we've been on for generations. Whoo, I'm tearing up again.

The first half of the concert was fairly heavy on TOS and TNG, both in terms of music and video footage. The second half was pretty balanced among the different series, though still a bit light on footage from Deep Space 9 (DS9). Unsurprisingly, The Animated Series was nowhere to be found, but we did get some music from the Starfleet Academy video game at the end of the intermission. We were also treated to the iconic Klingon theme, the sinister Borg theme (which loses a little bit of its oomph when played without that otherworldly synthesizer twang), and the overtures or main themes from most of the films and TV series.

When my wife and I were watching through DS9 at home, I liked to have fun with the opening music. There's a part at the beginning where the orchestra holds on a note, and an asteroid comes hurtling past the camera. I would always fill the space by singing a complimentary low note and the word "ROOOOOOCK" as grandly as possible, sweeping out my hand for greater dramatic effect. When the live orchestra played the DS9 theme at the concert, I waited for the appropriate moment and then asked the family member next to me to pass down a "rock" to my wife. It took a few moments for the gag to register, but I got a smile. Or maybe a shake of the head and a roll of the eyes; it's hard to remember without a program to refer back to.

Interestingly, Star Trek (2009) and Into Darkness were treated less like the new face of the franchise and more like films 11 and 12. Every other major part of Star Trek history got a proper voiceover introduction and a title card with the relevant air dates listed, but the one piece of music from the reboot films received no such treatment. The few video clips used elsewhere in the program were practically all from the good parts that don't make me cringe. I smiled at the thought of the concert organizers deliberately downplaying the divisive impact of the reboot and focusing on the Trek-worthy parts. This was my kind of concert.

Still, what I liked about the video selection was that it embraced all of Star Trek, including things that some of us might like to forget. There was a segment celebrating some of the franchise's biggest villains, and Shinzon was right there alongside Khan and Dukat. There was a touching montage about friends, family, and the loved ones these characters have lost, and suddenly a brief clip from "These Are the Voyages..." kicked us in the gut again. Star Trek isn't just the parts that everyone likes, and the low points have united fans just as much as the high points. A lesser concert would have excluded entire films and episodes from the program on the basis of popular opinion. I think it's a mark of integrity to tactfully acknowledge the whole canon and let the fans exercise selective memory if they want to.

One of the best surprises of the concert was getting to see whole episode clips where the music track was replaced with live music from the orchestra. We got to relive the excitement of Spock and Kirk's fight to the death from "Amok Time" as well as the pivotal space battle with the Dominion in "The Changing Face of Evil." We were swept up in the emotionality of Janeway's sendoff at the end of "Year of Hell," the null-gravity scene between Archer and Mayweather at the beginning of "Horizon," and the conclusion of "Encounter at Farpoint." We got chills (well, I got chills, anyhow) from Sisko's final log entry of "In the Pale Moonlight" and Archer's speech to the assembly in "Terra Prime" (which, as far as I'm concerned, is one of the best monologues in the whole franchise, and perfectly sums up what Star Trek is all about). The orchestra did a spectacular job of bringing the music to life and heightening our appreciation of these scenes that were already pretty darn appreciated.

Of course, my absolute favorite moment in the concert was the re-orchestrated cliffhanger scene from "The Best of Both Worlds, Part I":

"I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is futile. Your life as it has been is over. From this time forward, you will service... us." Slow camera close-up on Riker's face. Music so tense it feels like the universe is about to snap. "Mister Worf... FIRE."

BUM BUM BUM! BUM BUM BUM! BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!

INTERMISSION.

Awesome.

I'm more sentimental than I might let on, and things that are exceptionally cool have been known to get me misty-eyed. It's the extremes—the best and the worst—that crack my semi-stoic exterior. Before the end of the concert, I had simply run out of tears. The emotional music from First Contact got me. Kirk's brilliant "risk is our business" speech from "Return to Tomorrow" got me. All the funny moments, like Data scanning for those precious little lifeforms in Generations, got me. The exciting suite from Wrath of Khan, concluding with the iconic final scenes of the film, got me. The amount of love the concert gave to Undiscovered Country, my favorite film in the franchise, got me. Being surrounded by family and by friends I've never met, listening to a dynamite performance by a dynamite orchestra, got me. Everything was right with the world. It's been a very long time since all was right with the world, and that got me, too.

But, as they say, all good things...

After about 2-1/2 hours, it was time to return to my own century. The orchestra took a bow and shuffled offstage. But we knew they had to come back, because there was one more theme the concert would have been incomplete without.

The orchestra returned, and a single note was all it took to eke out one more tear from me before the end. "Faith of the Heart," the opening theme to Enterprise—was nowhere to be found, just kidding. No need to cause a riot.

The concert ended where it all began, with the theme to the original Star Trek. Whereas the rest of the music had been accompanied by clips from the shows and movies, the encore was filled with candid photographs of the cast and crew, the kind of things you'd see in a behind-the-scenes featurette. People getting into makeup and laughing on set, and the grinning countenance of Gene Roddenberry. There was no high soprano with the orchestra to drive the melody, but the conductor helped maintain the buoyancy of the piece by bouncing along with every swipe of his baton. When the music ended, the orchestra took their final bows to a standing ovation, and several musicians raised their hands in the Vulcan salute. What a fun way to end the concert.

Filled with such great joy and gratitude, I almost floated away after we left the theater. You had to tractor beam me back to earth. This was how I was supposed to feel about my favorite entertainment franchise. This was what a family outing to a professional concert could be like. This was a 50th anniversary celebration done right.

My free time in February was primarily devoted to designing my entry for the Make a Good Mega Man Level contest on the Mega Man fansite Sprites INC. Consequently, I'm a bit behind on the writing and recording I wanted to have done by now—but I'm behind for a good cause, and I'm excited to share my finished level with the general public once the judging is done. In the meantime, here's everything I did manage to accomplish that pertains to my online endeavors:

With the release of the 3DS Mega Man Legacy Collection, my name now appears in the credits of an official Mega Man game by Capcom. Naturally, there's a story behind this, and it's one of the most significant stories I've written about in quite a while. In keeping with this website's purpose as a base of operations for my creative endeavors, this seemed like a good time to set up a Games page that catalogs my contributions to professional and fan-made video games. I'm more prolific than you might expect, and there's potential for the list to grow in the years to come. I also kept plugging away at my Mega Man Series Opinions, finishing off my review of Mega Man X3 and going back to tidy up some of the Classic games now that I've started to categorize things a little differently.

As mentioned above, I was otherwise occupied for most of the month, so I didn't get to start recording the video footage for my playthrough of Mega Man 8 as originally planned. Still, I've got something to show for myself, including a livestream of random SNES games, and a particularly silly installment of The GameCola Podcats. Meow.

LEGO Jurassic World got my wife and me back into co-op gaming on a regular basis, and it was the most fun we've had with a LEGO game since way back on the GameCube with LEGO Star Wars. When we went out to pick up the Mega Man Legacy Collection on release day, a couple bargain-price LEGO games came home with us, allowing for many more stay-at-home date nights. In prepping for my SNES livestream, I noticed I'd never updated Kirby Super Star for the SNES after playing through it as part of Kirby's Dream Collection for the Wii, hence the random Completed status for a game I hadn't been playing. And that's all the boring news I have to share about my video game backlog.

If you caught any of my Mega Man Legacy Collection livestream, you know of my disappointment with the Challenge Mode of this otherwise superb collection. Faithful ports of the six NES Mega Man games, a music player, a comprehensive enemy database, and a sizable art gallery were well worth the $14.99 price tag on Steam for new players, but we old-timers were counting on the Challenge Mode to provide the one thing we didn't already have. We envisioned The Wily Wars, or the Game Boy games, or even the Challenge Mode of Mega Man 10, but instead we got whole chunks Mega Man 1-6 smashed together to form fifty-something time-trial stages. I don't think it's what any of us wanted, but I was willing to keep an open mind.

There are some clever challenges that transform these familiar sections into devious deathtraps. Some challenges start you in the middle of a hectic section without any chance to prepare. Other challenges run you through a gauntlet of boss fights or disappearing brick puzzles. The best challenges are disorienting, grueling, and have you exploiting every glitch and trick to shave a few seconds off your completion time. The worst challenges, unfortunately, are far more numerous. A person can only be expected to survive the moving platforms in Guts Man's stage, dodge the falling crystals in Crystal Man's stage, and square off against Charge Man so many times. Filler, repetition, and an egregious underuse of MM6 characterize the bulk of the challenges, and that's why I'm disappointed.

That's also why I got so excited about the Mega Man Legacy Collection Challenge Contest that Capcom held back in September. An opportunity for fans to submit their own challenges for inclusion in the 3DS release? Sign me up! Not only was this a chance to put my amateur game design chops to the test and contribute to my favorite video game franchise, but it was a chance to help make things right with the Challenge Mode. Ten new good challenges could go a long way in exploring the full potential of Challenge Mode and enticing veteran fans to pick up the collection.

I knew right away that my challenge submission had to have a theme. I considered stringing together a bunch of ice or water levels or mashing up all the most interesting Hard Hat sections, but I figured those were obvious enough that someone else would surely come up with them. After much consideration, I finally came up with a challenge stage I was proud to submit, excited to play, and thought had a low chance of being duplicated by someone else. Here's how I pitched it to the judges:

"The current challenge roster has a lot of emphasis on the earlier Mega Man games and the Robot Master stages, so my goal was to show a lot of love to some of the fortress stages we haven't seen much of. I also wanted to include sections that have a slower, safer way and a faster, riskier way to beat them; I feel this adds a layer of complexity to speedrunning strategies. Finally, I wanted to keep players improvising by choosing unconventional starting points as often as possible, and by including one section where Rush Coil must be used creatively in place of Rush Jet (assuming "Buster Only" just means the default options you have before beating any bosses, which would include Rush Coil in this case)."

Here's the kicker: In order to show the judges exactly what to include in the challenge, participants were asked to link to YouTube playthroughs of the Mega Man games in question and provide timestamps for the start and end of each segment. Guess who makes YouTube playthroughs of the Mega Man games? This guy. I can now say with certainty that someone at Capcom has seen some of my Mega Man videos, because I got an e-mail about two weeks later congratulating me on winning the contest. AWESOME. I didn't come down from that high for at least a week.

The months passed, and I still got occasional pangs of excitement when I thought about this wonderful thing that was going to happen. Finally, the 3DS Legacy Collection hit the stores, and I was there on release day to pick it up. Again. At double the price I had paid for it on Steam. I tried to ignore the visions I had of lighting money on fire and reminded myself of everything this version would contain.

Stickers! Great box art! The option of playing the original Japanese games! An even larger art gallery than before, complete with stuff I didn't already have elsewhere! Fun new backgrounds for my 3DS home menu! And, of course, ten (wait--eleven?) new challenge stages, one of which I designed. I was so psyched. Fortunately, I had the foresight to pick up a Mega Man amiibo well before I needed him to unlock the new challenge stages, so I could avoid shelling out $50 for the deluxe edition with the gold Mega Man amiibo that no one I've spoken with seems to care about.

(Side note: I totally would have bought the deluxe edition if Mega Man were in a color scheme associated with one of his special weapons...say, Gemini Laser? But I digress.)

During the entire ride home from the game store, I felt the kind of anticipation building inside myself like I used to get when I unwrapped a new video game as a kid. I don't get overly excited about much these days, but this was one of my childhood dreams about to come true, seeing a Mega Man level I designed in an official Mega Man game. As I fired up the game and started poking around the menu screen for new features, I started to feel that sense of wonder that helped get me hooked on video games in the first place. With the benefit of hindsight and plenty of time to incorporate fan feedback, surely the designers and developers alike had constructed some awesome new challenges that blew the old ones away.

Of course, the first thing was to see whether the contest winners were acknowledged in the credits. Important stuff.

THERE I AM! SO VERY COOL. You can tell this is an authentic screenshot and not Photoshopped, because it's blurry and crooked like an actual photograph. An actual photograph demonstrating alarmingly low hand-eye coordination for someone who plays Mega Man. But I digress.

I touched my Mega Man amiibo to the screen and was whisked away to a beautiful little menu of eleven challenges with fun-loving names. I scanned the list and determined that "Fortress Fun House" had to be mine. I was fully aware that the developers may have taken some liberties with my challenge idea (they even say so in the contest rules), so I wasn't expecting a perfect translation of my vision. I also wasn't expecting to feel like Alan Alda in Sweet Liberty.

The challenge I designed had ten segments. It started with MM5's fourth Proto Man stage (blast pillars and dodge spikes as the floor rises), transitioned to the first Mr. X stage from MM6 (at the intersection where you can take the highly dangerous shortcut to the boss door or the long, safer way around), and moved on to the boss of MM3's third Wily stage (the Mega Man clones). I felt this was a nice little trilogy of beginning, middle, and end; it front-loaded the challenge with a few areas likely to wreck a speedrun; and I'm pretty positive that none of those sections had been used yet in any of the old challenges.

Fortress Fun House skips those first two segments entirely. At least the boss fight is intact, and it's everything I'd hoped for.

Next up in my challenge were the brief underwater portion of the first Wily stage of MM4, the part of MM6's first Wily stage where you need to have mastered Jet Adapter to avoid impalement on the spikes (plus the alternate path for clever players), and the few screens at the end of MM4's first Cossack stage where the snow in the background kicks in.

Fortress Fun House includes the underwater section, once again omits the MM6 stage (it's official: they have a vendetta against MM6), and uses the completely wrong section of the Cossack stage. I was horrified to discover my utility-heavy vertical climb had been replaced with enemies popping out of bottomless pits (a trope I've come to despise). Adding insult to injury, the segment ends one screen before the part I wanted to include. Worse still, this exact section had already been done to death in the old challenges. I am so sorry that I'm somehow responsible for this segment; it is not what I chose.

My challenge continued with the second Proto Man stage of MM5 (the gauntlet of bouncing enemies between the pillars) and the second Wily stage of MM3 (full of bees and way too many power-ups). The latter would be an interesting experiment. The plan was to toss the player in the middle of a hectic section with hidden clamps biting at their ankles; after the initial shock, they'd proceed to the point where Rush Jet is required to reach the boss door. Except there would be no Rush Jet. Or any other special weapons, for that matter. But the interesting part about buster-only segments is that you still get Rush Coil by default for the games that have it. If you're creative, you can navigate the end of the stage with only Rush Coil. I'd hoped this would add a memorable puzzle element to an area that usually requires no effort whatsoever.

Fortress Fun House perfectly implements the few screens from MM5 and then sends the player off to the fourth Wily stage of MM3, where the junk bots start dropping out of the ceiling. At least there's still that initial surprise of enemies coming out of nowhere, there's a mess of power-ups in the middle, and it's not a segment that was used much in the old challenges, so it's a reasonable substitution. I can live with the change, and I wasn't really expecting that segment to go unaltered anyhow.

The home stretch of my challenge included the final stage of MM2 (lava dropping from the ceiling), starting the player a couple screens in to throw them off balance. Somehow, this iconic challenge (I believe) is 100% absent from the old challenges. The entire last leg of MM1's third Wily stage was the conclusion. The obvious place to start is at the beginning of the penguin tunnel, so I of course wanted to start at the point where it becomes a flying bomb tunnel. This would continue all the way through the boss fight against the dreaded bubbles of doom (CWU-01P, in case I need to prove my Mega Man cred). Similar to how the first part of the challenge formed an arc, so too did the last part—the gauntlets of death before the boss.

Fortress Fun House skips the MM2 segment altogether. Sure, why not. The MM1 segment is almost what I wanted, except it starts with the penguin tunnel and ends...right at the boss door. Which means I'm stuck with another segment that's been overdone in the other challenges. The boss was the important part, as I don't recall seeing it anywhere else (and it's a good strategic challenge), and the rest of the stage is pointless if you start where everyone expects you to. Bummer.

So, of the ten segments I—hang on; the challenge is still going. For some reason we're in the underwater spike-lined shaft in the third Wily stage of MM2. I don't even know where this came fro—oh, and now the challenge is over. Hey, look, I got a gold medal on my first try. Woo.

Of the ten segments I submitted, only three were implemented as I proposed. Two used a different portion of the same stage, two more were added from stages I didn't choose to include, and five were completely omitted. I don't know what's more disappointing: having my challenge almost completely gutted except for the "fortress" concept, or having my name attached to something I almost don't want to take credit for. Was this even the challenge I designed anymore?

I could understand removing or changing sections to cut down on length or avoid duplication, but that clearly wasn't the reason here. Almost every other new challenge was notably longer than mine, and the amount of duplication was unreal. Off the top of my head, I remember another pass at the penguin tunnel in MM1 and the watery spike shaft in MM2, two bouts with Napalm Man and Doc Robot Quick Man, two or three excursions to the line-guided platforms in MM2's fourth Wily stage, and three or four additional trips to the underwater part of MM4 that I used. And that's to say nothing of how many times most of these segments had been used in the original challenges.

Consequently, most of the other new challenges blend together in my head, but I can pick out a few things. No Swimming Allowed might be my favorite; it's a smart compilation of water levels (I knew someone else would come up with that!) that includes one or two segments we rarely or never see. Doc Robot Rematch fits nicely with the existing boss gauntlets. I like the concept of Ready Set Go; each segment is the beginning of a different stage, but too many are ones we've seen too many times before (particularly Cut Man).

Some of the buster-only segments of the other challenges are pretty good about forcing you to face situations that are totally doable with the buster but are almost always done with special weapons. The Wily stage from MM6 that I had wanted to use gets a brief but delightfully evil cameo. Starting the player in the middle of the MM3 Wily 3 hologram hallway was a stroke of genius. There are some great moments. There are also some horrid ones, such as three awful visits to the spike-filled Foot Holder corridor in the first Wily stage of MM1—two of them without the Magnet Beam to make it bearable. The worst part of Crystal Man's stage comes back to haunt us (whyyyy!?). I even gave up on Wily's Machines after failing my first attempt to take down Wily Machine 1 with just the buster; a projected 20 minutes to presumably fight a bunch of bosses that simply aren't fun without special weapons was not appealing to me.

These new challenges could have been a real treat for 3DS owners and a wonderful showcase of creativity from the fan community, but most of them are indistinguishable from any of the old challenges if you take away the amusing names. Segments are still being duplicated with no variation in start or end point. Whole stages are still unaccounted for, and MM6 is still lucky to be included at all. I'm not upset that my challenge was overhauled; I'm upset that it was overhauled to be more like every other challenge! I would love to hear what the developers and my fellow contest winners have to say about the matter. How many of these challenges still resemble the original submissions, and why was so much changed?

Ultimately, what the developers did with my design is all on them. I can still be proud that I designed something good enough to get me credited in a Mega Man game that people around the world are paying money to play. And that is a Very Cool Thing indeed.

2016 is off to a great start. In the absence of GameCola (the main site is still in disarray), I've been dedicating my free time to a select few side projects and my New Year's resolutions. Not only have I been very productive, but I feel generally more relaxed than I've felt in a long time. What you see here might well become the format for the year.

If you're only going by what I've posted on this blog, I've hardly done anything. But there's more to this site than the blog.

I've made a great many updates to my Mega Man series opinions, chipping away at Mega Man X3 and The Misadventures of Tron Bonne, and finishing off my review of Mega Man Powered Up. In fact, I might start giving each game its own page (instead of grouping them by category) to make my reviews easier to read and keep track of. I've also made serious headway with my Star Trek series opinions, as you'll see below. All of these posts are perpetual works in progress, mind you; the more I write, the more I'm reminded to go back and refine what I've already written.

As far as regular blog posts are concerned, there's the obligatory Retrospective, but the one about New Year's resolutions is easily one of my favorite things I've written here, and perhaps one of the most important.

Not a bad month for videos. One of last year's most popular podcasts finally made it to the GameCola YouTube channel, and my latest Mega Man Fangame Sampler livestream was especially well received. The Fangame Sampler before it also went pretty well, with me beating one of the games on my first try without losing a life. Lastly, I finished off a playthrough of one of my all-time favorite video games, and the whole experience was fun enough (for me and my audience) to try tackling the rest of the games in the series in the months to come.

Behind the scenes, I've been practicing my showoffery for Mega Man 8, the next video series I have planned for my GeminiLaser channel. I don't think I've been this excited about a recording project since Mega Man 5, which is especially surprising if you've read my Series Opinions on the game. If all goes as planned, you'll see the first video in March!

That New Year's resolution about my video game backlog has pushed me to change my gaming habits for the better. I tried a bunch of games. I removed them when I wasn't totally sold after the first play session. I powered through the last of Dragon Age: Origins in order to free up my lone, self-imposed PC game slot for something more my style. By the end of the month, my wife and I were back in the swing of co-op gaming on a regular basis, capping off one LEGO game we'd been working on for months and diving into a new one we'd just received for Christmas. Finally, in going through my Backloggery to finish writing mini-reviews for all the games I'd beaten before joining the site, I discovered a criminal offense: leaving a Mega Man game marked as less than Complete when I'd clearly met the requirements.

One of my favorite blogging traditions with Exfanding Your Horizons was making up New Year's resolutions with my blogging buddy and then reflecting on them a year later. The blog went on permanent hiatus on the day we'd normally do our writing and reflecting, and I somehow never reinstated the tradition on this blog.

That's because, originally, this blog was little more than a place to get my writing fix until Exfanding came back from hiatus. Something temporary. I wasn't planning on setting down roots here and carrying on with traditions. This was the same thing I said about moving to the moon, and I've been living here since 2011. Somewhere along the line, this blog and my moon base became my home, and it's only recently that I've been treating them as such. I'd been waiting for the day where I'd resume business as usual, but this is business as usual. Time to stop looking to the past like it's the future. Time to look at the present and do something about it if it's not to my liking. What a good time to start making resolutions again.

"Resolutions" isn't the right word, though. Resolutions are promises you feel guilty for breaking. I prefer to set goals; goals are things you feel good about achieving. I've learned to set reasonable goals for myself that are general enough to accomplish, but specific enough to be meaningful. Here's what I have in mind for 2016:

Goal #1: Start and finish a YouTube playthrough of Mega Man 8.Anyone familiar with the saga of Mega Man 7 knows how much of a stretch this one is. Each Mega Man video series I've done has taken longer than the last, so smart money says I won't accomplish this goal until 2020 at the very earliest. Smart money is inanimate and highly flammable, however, so you shouldn't listen to it. I've streamlined my recording process and am livestreaming on a regular basis, which keeps me in the recording spirit, so I believe I can make this happen if I keep at it.

Goal #2: Make serious headway on the video game my wife and I are planning.We don't talk about it much because we want to keep the particulars a secret, but my wife and I are working on a video game. It's still in the planning stages, but I'd like to have at least a partially playable beta ready before the end of the year.

Goal #3: Run at least one D&D campaign, then learn a new tabletop RPG system and run another campaign.Since I started playing in college, Dungeons & Dragons has been an endless source of stories and one of my favorite ways to spend time with people. Moving to the moon has put me out of touch with a regular group of players, but nothing says I can't host the occasional one-shot campaign for friends and family who are willing to hop on a rocketship and drop in for a weekend. I'm also looking to diversify beyond D&D, as my other tabletop RPG experience is quite limited, and there's a copy of the Serenity Roleplaying Game rulebook on my shelf that's been gathering dust for too gorram long.

Goal #4: Read 12 books.I was an avid reader up until late middle school or early high school, at which point I started associating reading with work, rather than with leisure. I've since warmed back up to reading as a pastime, and I casually follow a number of blogs, but I'd like to get back in the habit of reading as an alternative to the electronic entertainment that dominates my life. One book a month doesn't seem unreasonable, especially if I include graphic novels, which totally count.

Goal #5: Get my Backloggery progress index into positive double digits.It's only since 2014 that I've been finishing more video games a year than I add to my collection, but just barely. Net progress in 2014 was +5, and 2015 was a measly +2 (technically +3, if you count the game I sold in December but forgot to remove from my list until New Year's Day). Lest you think this is a "play more video games" goal, my intention here is to be more discerning with how I spend my time and money, trimming my collection down to only the games I truly want to be there.

Goal #6: Write like I used to.There are three meanings here: write regularly, write positively, and write for myself. Writing is cathartic, and I want to look back on a year's worth of posts that I would want to read, even if I hadn't written them. I want to unearth the bright-eyed, happy little kid inside me who's been buried under the layers of anger, frustration, disappointment, and anxiety that have accumulated over the last few years of resisting the present instead of reshaping it. With GameCola on hiatus, it's more important than ever that I make this website feel like home, and writing like I used to may be the best way to do it.

Ta-dah! A half-dozen goals, and those are just the ones I'm writing down (I'll spare you the one about eating less fried dough this time). Ambitious? Yes, but not unreachable. These aren't only goals; they're lifestyle changes, or at least catalysts for such—and after the 2015 I had, I have never been so ready for change. See you back here in a year to assess my success!

2015 ended on a high note for me. Good time spent with friends and family, some of the best weeks of work I've had all year, plenty of vacation time, meaningful personal development, and a change of focus that I hope will lead to a joyful and productive 2016. You'll note one big absence on this list: GameCola.net suffered a catastrophic server failure early in the month—the day before the shortest review I've ever written got posted, as though the website couldn't cope with me writing anything of substance shorter than 700 words.

Normally we'd revert to a recent backup version of the site, but due to mysterious technical issues, the latest backup we had was from sometime in November. An executive decision was made to put the site on hiatus to give our webmaster time to look into recovering the lost data, but also to give the Editor-in-Chief time to work on GameCola 4.0, a revised version of the site with all the modern bells and whistles we've been missing. I'll no doubt write more about the situation as time goes on, but in the meantime, I've been devoting my free time to other side projects that have been languishing for too long.

It's good to be writing again on a regular basis, and writing more positively, at that. In addition to the posts below, which hopefully represent a return to the kind of writing I used to do for Exfanding Your Horizons in its heyday, I was busy working on my Series Opinions for Star Trek: The Original Series and Enterprise, which I'll formally link to once they're complete.

One GameCola contribution managed to slip through, despite the main site being out of commission. In honor of the new Star Wars movie, I kicked off a playthrough of one of my all-time favorite games, and it's been helping me refine my livestreaming style. The third installment of Jedi Knight and the second Backloggery Choice stream are two of my favorites so far (if nothing else, watch the Paperboy section of the first video below).

Of course, no mention of YouTube videos would be complete without a celebration of the true, final, real end of the Mega Man 7 recording saga. One of the funniest things I've ever released, according to me, and a joy to assemble.

December is always a bad month for my struggle against the evil Bak'laag. Between Christmas, winter sales on Steam and GOG, and holiday travels that take me near used game stores, my game collection always seems to inflate around this time. At least my patience has run out for games that aren't worth my time; I'm abandoning bad and unrewarding games with a vengeance nowadays, and I've decided to go back to playing only the games I think I'll like—anything that's culturally worthwhile but not worth the effort is something I can watch someone else play on YouTube.